Tuesday, March 03, 2015

On Thursday,
the Kentucky House passed House Bill 236 with a vote of 88 to 5. The
bill, conceived by the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team, amends KRS
160.352 to allow for an optional student representative on
superintendent screening committees.

Hiatt Allen

In the
course of building support, the Student Voice Team found that some
legislators question whether students are capable of following
confidentiality guidelines set forth by such committees. We take the
concern seriously and have done our research to allay it.

The
superintendent screening committee currently consists of two teachers,
one classified staff, one principal, one board of education member, one
parent and, in some cases, one minority member. Each member must undergo
training before serving on the committee in order to understand how to
navigate the process and the information. Students would — and should —
be treated no differently.

Legal concern about students
serving in this capacity as minors has no basis in fact. As First
Amendment attorney Jon Fleischaker of Dinsmore and Shohl put it: "There
is no legal reason why a minor cannot have access to confidential
information which may exist in a superintendent search."

But,
if attorney confidence isn't enough assurance, University of Kentucky's
General Counsel William Thro explained there is an easy fix: Minors
could simply have a parent sign a confidentiality agreement on their
behalf. Thro elaborated that legal issues could be further mitigated by
having candidates waive their confidentiality rights, just as patients
do with regard to disclosing health information.

Yet
another objection to our legislation stems from the suspicion that being
an adolescent implies an inherent disadvantage in handling sensitive
information. But that is selling the potential of young people short. A
cursory look at our history textbooks and the headlines proves that in
the realm of public policy, students are capable of doing remarkably
high-level work.

When he was just 14, future President
John Quincy Adams represented the United States on a mission in Russia
to convince Catherine the Great to support the cause of the United
States.

Arkansas' teenaged Little Rock Nine worked in sync with the
civil rights movement to spearhead the integration of the state's public
schools during the height of racial tension. Even more recently,
17-year-old Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize fighting for the
rights of girls worldwide to receive an equitable education.

But
even in the specialized context of serving on a superintendent
screening committee, students who already serve in high capacities of
school governance across America further neutralize the concern about
confidentiality.

In the District of Columbia and Hawaii,
students serve on the state board of education. And in Montgomery
County, Md., students have elected a student representative to the board
for decades. Alan Xie, who at 16 successfully served on the Montgomery
County board as a voting member of the superintendent screening
committee, is adamant about students' ability to manage sensitive
information. "In the history of our board," he said, "there has never
been an issue with confidentiality on the part of our student member."

Rachel
Gunther from the Boston-based Youth on Board, which trains young people
to serve on boards with adults, backs Xie up. When it comes to ensuring
students can handle sensitive information related to board service, she
emphasized, training is everything. Gunther told us decades of field
experience dictate that there is virtually no difference between young
people and adults in the ability to apply discretion with sensitive
personnel and other information.

Students spend 35 hours a
week in the classroom and are the chief stakeholders in our schools.
Why rule out even the possibility of considering us as partners at the
superintendent screening table?

Just as we have always
trusted the General Assembly to act in our best interest, we ask you to
trust us, as responsible and engaged young citizens, to handle
confidential information inherent in the superintendent screening
process.

Now is the time to pass House Bill 236.

Hiatt
Allen is the social media director of the Prichard Committee Student
Voice Team and one of its co-founders. He is a recent graduate of Tates
Creek High School in Lexington and a current freshman at American
University.

Under Senate
Bill 135, school site-based councils would take on more of an advisory
role, and superintendents would have more authority.

Currently, school site-based councils set
policy and, along with superintendents, help select principals and
teachers, and determine which textbooks should be used among other
duties.

School site-based councils are composed of parents, teachers and a school administrator, such as a principal.

It should be noted that the Kentucky
Association of School Councils is opposed to the bill, while the
Kentucky School Boards Association remains neutral on the bill.

One of the most frequent education arguments is the need for more parent participation.

In Kentucky, parents currently have a great
amount of say in how their schools operate, yet Senate Bill 135 would
reduce that voice to a whisper, if not eliminate it.

Site-based councils give teachers a stronger voice in governing their schools, as well.

Under the bill, superintendents would make
policy decisions after consulting with the site-based councils. Bill
sponsor Sen. John Schnickel argued that superintendents are held
accountable for what happens in a school district, but “we do not give
them the tools they need to manage the school system effectively.”

Another argument used in support of the
bill is that Kentucky has some strong site-based councils, and some weak
site-based councils.

Certainly, the same argument could be applied to superintendents in Kentucky.

Any system that involves active participation of parents and teachers as well as administrators is a system worth preserving.

Superintendents are as involved as they
want to be in these site-based policy-making decisions, but the voices
of parents and teachers should not be softened or silenced.

I believe every child
can learn and excel in the right environment. With few exceptions, a
struggling school needs an experienced principal to boost achievement; a
principal who knows how to lead and develop teachers, as well as engage
parents and the wider community to foster a culture of success.

There
are many distinguished principals who would take on a new challenge.
But they are understandably reluctant to apply in a process that by law
should be but is often not confidential. That's why I believe the
superintendent needs more authority to intervene in selecting principals
and I urge every citizen and Kentucky legislator to support Senate Bill
132, which soon heads to the Kentucky House of Representatives for a
vote.
I
wish to express my gratitude to Kentucky Sen. Dan Seum for sponsoring
SB 132. He understands the importance of attracting seasoned leaders to
improve schools that are failing our kids.

As a business owner,
Sen. Seum echoes what I hear from business leaders throughout our city:
They think of the superintendent as the CEO of a large corporation and
principals as part of the senior executive team. Both the superintendent
and the CEO are held accountable for results. If a division of a large
company performs poorly, the CEO has the authority to hire a new senior
executive to turn the ship around.
Under
Kentucky law, the superintendent can only pick a new principal for
schools ranked at the bottom 5 percent of achievement. This is
unacceptable. If SB 132 passes, the superintendent's authority would
expand to fill principal vacancies among the bottom 25 percent of
struggling schools. This will prevent many more schools from falling off
the academic cliff.

The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of
1990 was a remarkable piece of legislation with notable checks and
balances to protect students from biased hiring by superintendents. KERA
gives site-based decision making councils the authority to select
principals.

Unfortunately, the names of the finalists are often
exposed by word of mouth and in local news reports. Meanwhile the
applicants not selected return to their schools where everyone wants to
know, "Why would you want to leave us?" It is difficult for a principal
to resume leadership while focusing on rebuilding trust and repairing
strained relationships. This not only hurts careers, it hurts kids.
Experienced principals don't want to take the risk so they don't apply.

If
Senate Bill 132 passes, the superintendent could reach out directly and
confidentially to the district's most accomplished principals when
there is a vacancy at a struggling school. The superintendent would also
consult with the site-based decision making council and community
stakeholders. This worked well at JCPS in the selection of former Fern
Creek Principal Houston Barber to lead the Academy at Shawnee and
Fernley Middle School Principal Rob Stephenson to lead Valley High
School and the Valley Prep Academy. But I was only able step in because
Shawnee and Valley were in the bottom 5 percent in the state.

There
are thousands of other students falling far behind at schools doing
better than the bottom 5 percent, but better is not nearly good enough.

We
need a law that enables our school superintendents to give our at-risk
students the leaders they deserve to succeed in school and throughout
life. That's why Kentucky needs SB 132.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan—and President Barack Obama—have been fine-tuning their case against a
Republican bill to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act that's slated to pass
the U.S. House of Representatives next week.

One of their big beefs with the
legislation? It doesn't include any language to cut back on testing.

The difficulty is ... Duncan is also
one of the loudest voices clamoring in favor of keeping NCLB's testing schedule, which calls for
statewide assessments in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.

To be sure, the policy here—keep the
NCLB law's schedule while trimming back local and state tests to the bare
minimum—isn't exactly contradictory. But the rhetoric is twisty and probably
pretty tough for a parent or teacher who isn't hanging on the administration's
every word to grasp.

And it's even tougher to wrap your
mind around what where Duncan started out on testing and where he is now, at
least rhetorically. After all, standardized tests have formed the backbone of
nearly every major Obama K-12 initiative, from teacher evaluation, to school
improvement grants to Race to the Top in its various forms to teacher
preparation.

Check out some flashbacks:

• April 2009: Early on his
tenure, Duncan addressed the testing question, in speaking to the Education
Writers Association. And, while he's sympathetic to teachers' concerns, he sure
doesn't sound like he thinks there's too much testing:

"We know that test scores don't
tell you everything about students or teachers ... but they do tell you
something ... and until we come up with better measures ways to measure achievement
... we must use what we have."

• June 2009: The
administration ended up giving a big boost in its Race to the Top competition to states that were
willing to include test score data as one component of teacher evaluations. In
fact, states that prohibited linking student test scores to individual teachers
were ineligible to win a grant.

Here's how Duncan explained his
reasoning, in a speech to the Institute of Education Sciences:

"To somehow suggest that we
should not link student achievement and teacher effectiveness is like
suggesting we judge a sports team without looking at the box score. It's like
saying, since standardized tests are not perfect, eliminate testing until they
are. I think that's simply ridiculous. We need to monitor progress. We need to
know what is and is not working and why."

• June 2009: The
administration also set aside $360 million in Race to the Top money to help
states craft tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards. (That eventually
led to the tests developed by two consortia of states.)

Here's Duncan's sales pitch on that
concept, in speaking to the Governors Education Summit. These will be
better tests, he tells them:

"We need tests that go beyond
multiple choice, and we know that these kinds of tests are expensive to
develop. It will cost way too much if each state is doing this on its own.
Collaboration makes it possible for this to happen quickly and affordably. Now,
again, some people may claim that a commonly created test is a threat to state
control, but let's remember who is in charge. You are. You will create these
tests. You will drive the process. You will call the shots."

•June 2011: In speaking to
the National Forum, a non-profit organization's, Annual Schools to Watch
Conference, about successful middle schools, Duncan said that testing often can
actually be a good thing:

"What is most striking about
the higher-performing middle schools was that they saw data and the frequent
use of assessments as a blessing, not as a burden."

•July 2011: Later that
summer, he talked up the power of the testing consortia again, in speaking to
the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards:

"In the 21st century, we
shouldn't be guessing whether or not a teacher is impacting student learning—we
should know—and while we know that the current generation of tests are far from
perfect, a new generation is in development that will be better."

•June 2013: Duncan said in a
speech at the National Press Club in Washington that most folks, beyond the
Beltway, are actually in favor of standardized tests:

"In the real world, most people
are not against meaningful testing. They know we need some kind of test to know
if kids are actually learning and to hold everyone accountable, including
students themselves."

•June 2014: Then, around
2014, we start to notice a clear shift—Duncan talks about how local testing
adds to teachers' burden:

"A lot of teachers are
frustrated—and maybe that's a gentle word—about plans that will hold them
accountable for tests attached to new, career- and college-ready standards
before they feel they have mastered them. ... I know that there are places
where testing has gotten out of hand. ... But too many school systems have
allowed unnecessary and redundant tests to be layered on ..."

•In August 2014, Duncan told
states that they could hit the pause button on tying teacher evaluation to test
scores for an additional school year. In a blog post explaining the change-up,
he talked about how testing—and test preparation—take up too much time. (Great
analysis by Catherine Gewertz here.)

"Many have expressed concern
about low-quality and redundant tests. And in some places, tests and
preparation for them dominate the culture of schools, causing undue stress. ...
I strongly believe in using high-quality assessments, including annual tests,
as one (but only one) part of how adults improve instruction and hold
themselves responsible for students' progress."

•February 2015: In
criticizing Republican proposals to rewrite the NCLB law, the current version
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, both Duncan and Obama note that
the proposals don't include any sort of language to limit testing. In a Feb.
14 radio address, Obama said that passing a strong
ESEA reauthorization "means cutting testing down to the bare minimum
required to make sure parents and teachers know how our kids and schools are
doing from year to year, and relative to schools statewide."

And earlier in the month, in
speaking to members of the Parent Association in Annapolis, Md., Duncan said
that, under the GOP bill,

"There would be no cap on testing ... We want to
hold the line on accountability and testing, but we want to set some
common-sense limits there."

Meanwhile, just a few weeks earlier,
Duncan gave his biggest speech in years on NCLB and made it clear he wants to
keep the testing schedule.

"All students need to take annual, statewide
assessments that are aligned to their teacher's classroom instruction in
reading and math in grades 3 through 8, and once in high school."

So essentially, Obama and Duncan are
criticizing Republicans for not imposing limits on testing in the same breath
that they are calling for keeping annual, statewide assessments. It's not
contradictory, per se, but it's pretty darn confusing, for the casual observer
if not the wonk. (I feel for Duncan's speechwriters. It cannot be fun to parse
that policy. )

What's more, the administration
isn't exactly calling for testing "caps" as Duncan told folks in
Maryland. It's supporting an effort by states and districts to take a close
look at the number of state and local tests they require, and encouraging them
to pare back the ones that are redundant or just plain unhelpful. The administration
likes a bill by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Rep. Suzanne
Bonamici, D-Ore., that would allow states to use federal resources
to do such an this "audit"—and it's true that it's not in the House
bill yet. But, to my mind, encouraging local and state limits is not the same
thing as setting actual caps.

The bottom line: Clearly, Duncan's messaging has shifted over the years,
from making tests better and richer and using that data for everything from
teacher evaluation to program improvement, to cutting tests down to the bare
minimum needed to get a clear picture of student achievement for accountability
purposes.

Is that an evolution in thinking,
rhetorical gymnastics ... or actual flip-flopping? Hit up the comments section.

In a political embarrassment for Republicans, House GOP leaders on
Friday abruptly cancelled a vote on a bill to update the George W.
Bush-era No Child Left Behind education law after struggling to find
support from conservatives.

The bill would keep the annual testing
requirements on schools but would give more freedom to states and
districts to spend federal dollars and identify and fix failing schools.
But conservative opponents said it doesn't go far enough to let states
and districts set education policy. Such conservative groups as Heritage
Action for America and Club for Growth are among the opponents.

"We
have a constitutional duty as members of Congress to return education
decisions to parents and states," Rep. Justin Amash, (R) of Michigan
wrote this week on Facebook.

Democrats also dislike the bill and said it would abdicate the
federal government's responsibility to ensure that poor, minority,
disabled, and non-English speaking students go to good schools and that
billions of federal education dollars are spent wisely. The White House
threatened to veto the bill, calling it "a significant step backwards."

Senior Republican officials said it was
unclear when a vote would occur. The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss private
negotiations.

"I look forward to continuing to discuss with my
colleagues the conservative reforms in this legislation, and I expect we
will have an opportunity to finish this important work soon," Rep. John
Kline (R) of Minnesota, the sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
Representative Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce
Committee, said the delay happened because the debate over funding the
Homeland Security Department had taken priority on the House floor.

The
bipartisan 2002 No Child Left Behind law was a signature achievement of
Mr. Bush, and its authors included the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D)
Massachusetts and current House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio. It
sought to close significant gaps in the achievement of poor and minority
students and their more affluent peers. It mandated annual testing in
reading and math for students in grades three to eight and again in high
school. Schools had to show student growth or face consequences.

But its requirement that all students be able to read and do math at grade level by 2014 proved elusive.

The
Obama administration in 2012 began allowing waivers around some of the
law's more stringent requirements if schools agreed to certain
conditions, like using college- and career-ready standards such as
Common Core. The standards have been adopted in more than 40 states and
spell out what English and math skills students should master in each
grade. They are a political issue in many states because they are viewed
by critics as a federal effort even though they were developed by US
governors.

House Republican leaders have used their bill to show
their opposition to the Obama administration's encouragement of the
Common Core state standards because it prohibits the federal education
secretary from demanding changes to state standards or imposing
conditions on states in exchange for a waiver around federal law.

It
also eliminates many federal programs, creates a single local grant
program and allows public money to follow low-income children to
different public schools.

Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage
Action for America, said conservatives were upset that amendments
weren't allowed on provisions their group supported that included
eliminating federal testing mandates, allowing states to opt out of the
law and allowing public money to follow low-income students to private
schools.

Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat,
noted that the same bill that was pulled from the floor on Friday got no
Democratic votes when it was passed by the House in 2013.

"How sad that, in an issue so important to our country, that we don't have a bipartisan bill," Representative Hoyer said.

In
the Senate, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, the chairman of the
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Patty
Murray, (D) of Washington, the committee's senior Democrat, say they are
working on a bipartisan proposal to fix the law. Alexander said this
week he's hopeful he can get something to the Senate floor in March.

Kentucky in 2014 had the second highest per-capita rate in
the country of inappropriate relationships between school employees and
students, according to a national study of media reports conducted by a
former U.S. Department of Education official.

Kentucky was just
behind Alabama, which had the highest rate of cases in the country, and
just ahead of Louisiana, said Terry Abbott, who was chief of staff at
the U.S. Department of Education during the George W. Bush
administration.

Abbott is currently chairman of Houston-based Drive West Communications,
which collected data from media reports in every state daily in 2014 to
catalog how often the inappropriate relationships are occurring and to
identify trends.

Abbott said his study was not a scientific report.

"We
tracked 781 cases nationwide of school employees who were accused or
charged, or convicted or sentenced, in such cases in 2014. We tracked 22
cases in Kentucky, which gave Kentucky the second highest rate in the
country per capita. We used the U.S. Census Bureau's 2014 estimates of
the population in each state to establish the benchmark," he said.

"Our
data shows that in Kentucky, the problem is largely an issue among male
school employees, just as it is nationwide," said Abbott. "Our tracking
showed that 68 percent of the cases in Kentucky in 2014 involved male
school employees. It's basically the same story nationwide — while cases
involving female employees seem to draw extra attention from the
public, the fact is that nationally two-thirds of the cases involve
men."

Abbott's firm looked at age of the educators involved.
Nationwide, the men averaged age 38 and the women 32. In Kentucky, the
men averaged 41, and the women 29. The average age of the student
victims in Kentucky was just under 15, and the national average was 15.

Abbott
also tracked what role social media played because "we had been seeing
so many reports around the country about teachers and other school
employees using social media to lure students into relationships."

Abbott
found that nationwide, private messages delivered through social media
and text messaging were a factor in 38 percent of the cases in 2014. In
Kentucky, social media and text messaging was involved in 36 percent of
the cases. "Parents should closely monitor the social media interactions
of their children," said Abbott. "Thankfully, many of these cases have
been broken when parents have found nude pictures and other
inappropriate messages to children from teachers. More parents should
start monitoring their children's social media usage for signs of this
kind of trouble."

He recommended that teachers be required to
report to principals ahead of time when they plan to be alone in a
classroom with a student.

Thousands shirk tax bills, and Kentucky schools pay the price

Kentucky Fuel Corp., a company owned by West Virginia
billionaire Jim Justice, mined millions of dollars worth of coal in Pike
and Knott counties in 2013.

What the company didn't do was pay
more than $660,000 in property tax bills in those counties, depriving
the local school districts of more than $274,000.

In Knott County,
$138,000 would have gone to the school system under the initial bill,
enough to cover salaries for three starting teachers or seven classified
employees, such as cooks and bus drivers, in a school system that has
trimmed staff to deal with tight finances.

"It would go a long way for our county," said Greg Conn, finance director for the system.

Kentucky
Fuel Corp.'s delinquent bills, some of which the company has begun
paying after receiving inquiries from the Herald-Leader, are merely the
biggest on a long list of delinquent taxpayers.

Every year in
Kentucky, thousands of property tax bills go unpaid, shorting schools,
counties, health departments and other agencies of money. It's a
particular problem in Eastern Kentucky, where local officials in some of
the state's poorest counties don't do all they could to make people pay
up.

The delinquency rate on property tax collections topped 5
percent on real property in at least 20 counties each of the last five
tax years, with some more than four times the statewide rate.

For
instance, the delinquency rate on 2013 real-estate property taxes was
12.2 percent in Knott County, 9.56 in Breathitt County and 9.43 in Lee
County, when the statewide rate was 1.79 percent.
In 2012, when the state delinquency rate was 1.93 percent, it was 9.3
percent in Owsley County, 8.9 percent in Magoffin County and 8.29
percent in Floyd County. Those rates were a snapshot of unpaid property
taxes as of mid-April.

In many counties with high delinquency rates, local services are underfunded and schools scrape by on paper-thin budgets.

How many of your neighbors didn't pay their property tax bills?

In Leslie County, there was $1.4 million in unpaid tax revenue due to
the school system as of early 2014, County Clerk James Lewis said. He
calculated the total, which had piled up since 2003, for school
officials concerned about a potential budget shortfall.

The
starting pay for a teacher in the county is about $35,000, so the unpaid
taxes, spread equally over 10 years, amounted to about four teacher
salaries annually.
"In essence, when people don't pay their taxes, they're shortchanging
the children in their community," said Leslie County schools
Superintendent Anthony Little.
Even with relatively high delinquency rates in some places, however,
property tax collections overall have improved from 25 years ago,
boosted by legislative changes and by a system in which third-party
investors buy delinquent tax bills, then foreclose if necessary to
recoup interest and fees.

Delinquency rates topped 10 percent in
11 counties in 1989, with some well above that level, but it has been
rare the last decade for counties to have non-payment rates above 10
percent.

Still, many local officials don't use the powers they've been given to collect every dollar possible.
Sheriffs rarely use their legal power to take assets of individuals
and businesses to collect delinquent taxes. Most county attorneys file
few, if any, foreclosure lawsuits to collect delinquent taxes, state
records and interviews show.
And the sale of delinquent tax bills doesn't eliminate unpaid taxes.
Some counties attract few buyers, meaning the sales bring in little
money, and in many counties, the sales still leave a majority of the
delinquent bills unpaid.

Vast improvement

It
wasn't long ago that property owners in some Kentucky counties could
skip their civic and legal duty to pay taxes with no repercussion other
than being included in the list of delinquent taxpayers printed in the
local newspaper.

In 1989, as part of the Cheating Our Children series, the
Herald-Leader published a photo of a list of property tax delinquents in
Pike County. The printed list was more than 500 feet long.

In 1989, when the Herald-Leader published a photo of a printout of
the list of delinquent taxpayers in Pike County, it stretched 525 feet.

"If
you don't mind having your name in the newspaper, ... you don't have to
pay your taxes," said Paul Patton, who was then Pike County
judge-executive and later was governor for two terms.

Pike County
had the highest delinquency rate in the state in 1989, at 18 percent,
but Breathitt and Harlan counties topped 17 percent. Magoffin County was
at 16.1 percent, and Menifee County was at 13.2 percent.

Local politicians in several counties were among those whom the newspaper found hadn't paid their taxes.

Politics
played a key role in the relatively poor collections in some counties,
as local officials trying to win favor with voters let them slide on tax
payments.

"A big part of it was politics," said former state Rep.
Roger Noe, a Democrat from Harlan County. "They just didn't want to
ruffle feathers if they didn't have to. It was understood that it wasn't
going to be enforced."

When Noe and other legislators worked to
push through landmark school reforms and companion bills in 1990, tax
collections were part of the debate.

Lawmakers from affluent
districts being asked to support more state aid for poorer districts
wanted to make sure that all local officials did their part to correctly
assess property values, set tax rates and collect the bills.

As a
result, one of the measures passed that year gave state revenue
officials more power to intervene in local property tax collections. It
was the first in a series of changes lawmakers approved in the ensuing
25 years to boost collections.

The changes included allowing
taxpayers to set up payment plans for delinquent taxes, rather than
having to pay a lump sum; shortening the time county attorneys have to
wait to force the sale of property; and creating incentives for third
parties to buy delinquent bills.

The statewide delinquency rate
dropped for several years beginning in 2003, hitting a low of 0.91
percent in 2007, according to calculations by the state Department of
Revenue.
The percentage of unpaid taxes shot up to 2.53 percent in 2009 during
the recession, but collections have since improved statewide as
Kentucky and the nation recovered.

The sharp downturn in Eastern
Kentucky coal jobs since early 2012 has hurt tax payments in some
counties, but overall, collections reached 98.21 percent for the 2013
tax year. That rate was calculated in April, so it doesn't reflect
additional payments made since then on delinquent 2013 bills.

"Collection
rates, I think, are very good," said Thomas S. Crawford, the state
Revenue Department division director who advises local officials on
collections. "We're pretty confident we get nearly every dollar on real
estate."

Unpaid bills

Most
are small — $100 or less in many cases. But a Herald-Leader review of
delinquent tax rolls in more than 20 counties found numerous instances
of relatively large outstanding bills on real property, including land
and houses, and on tangible property, such as business equipment.

This store owes more than $29,000 in delinquent taxes.

Some examples:

* In Bell County, a company called G&M Oil
has a delinquent tangible-tax bill from 2013 on a busy convenience store
and a delinquent bill from 2010 on real property, totaling more than
$29,000 with penalties and interest. Of that, more than $9,000 would go
to the county school system, according to county Clerk Debbie Gambrel's
office.

* The Raintree Group, which is based in Lexington, owes
more than $20,000 on delinquent bills from 2010 and 2013 in Knox County,
with nearly $3,000 due in school taxes, according to county Clerk Mike
Corey's office.
* In Floyd County, Reformation Publishers, which prints religious books,
has not paid a 2013 tangible-property tax bill. The original bill of
$5,308 — which would have meant nearly $2,300 for the school system —
now totals more than $9,200 with penalties and interest.

Those companies did not return calls seeking comment.

Kentucky
Fuel, the mining company with delinquent bills topping $660,000 in Pike
and Knott counties, didn't pay on time mostly because of anemic cash
flow caused by the sharp downturn in coal production in Eastern
Kentucky, said Steve Ball, senior vice president of operations at
Kentucky Fuel's parent company.

Records show that Kentucky Fuel
has three active surface mines in Pike County, but that its mines and
other properties in Knott and other counties are idle or non-producing.

Ball said the company would make good on its tax debts.

After the
Herald-Leader asked the company about its delinquent bills in early
December, Kentucky Fuel set up a plan to pay a delinquent 2013 tax bill
in Pike County that totaled $572,000 with penalties and interest.

But
in Knott County, assistant county attorney Randy Slone said Kentucky
Fuel didn't follow through on an inquiry about setting up a plan to pay a
delinquent bill that totaled nearly $600,000 with penalties and
interest.

Slone sued the company Jan. 15 to collect.

"It's not our intent to harm their business, but it's an obligation" that the company owes, Slone said.

'Afraid of the politics'

Long
before such lawsuits are contemplated, state law gives sheriffs
considerable power to collect taxes, including authority to seize and
sell taxpayers' personal property to satisfy a delinquent bill — a
procedure known as distraint. They also can intercept money due to a
delinquent taxpayer from someone else.

Sheriffs rarely use their power, however.

Crawford,
who has been with the state Revenue Department since 1985, said he
couldn't recall a sheriff distraining property since then-Johnson County
Sheriff Bill Witten did it 15 years ago.

When Witten took office
in 1999, some people hadn't paid taxes in 10 years, and he found six
people who owed more than $100,000 each, he said at the time.

Witten
froze the bank accounts of more than 500 taxpayers to try to force them
to pay delinquent taxes. More than 100 paid up in just two days,
according to reports from the time.

Crawford includes information about distraint in training for
sheriffs, but there are practical problems in trying to seize property
or money, according to state and local officials.

A taxpayer might
not have enough money in a bank account to cover a bill, for instance,
and taking equipment would bring costs to transport, store, safeguard
and sell it.

"It kinds of puts some undue hardship on us," Knott County Sheriff Dale Richardson said.
He has heard of distraint, but he said he has never used it.
Many rural sheriffs' offices also are short-staffed, so it would be
hard to track down and confiscate equipment, said Libby Pickard, who
helped with tax collections for her husband, Knox County Sheriff John
Pickard, before he left office at the end of the year.

The office had six deputies to patrol a county of 32,000 residents, Libby Pickard said in an interview late last year.
"We just don't have enough officers to do that," she said of seizing equipment to satisfy taxes. "They run from call to call."

Dennis
Miller, who retired after more than three decades with the state
Revenue Department, said he's convinced that sheriffs could use asset
seizures more often to collect delinquent tax bills. They don't because
they fear it would cost them votes, he said.

"They're afraid of the politics," Miller said.

Worth pursuing?

When people don't pay their
real estate taxes to the sheriff, a lien is placed against the property
that is enforceable for 11 years. The taxes get collected if someone
buys the property during that time.

Short of that, however,
collection options are limited for property tax bills that aren't bought
by third-party collectors. Either the owner finally pays up or the
county attorney sues.

But most county attorneys file few, if any,
foreclosure complaints, according to reports filed with the state
Revenue Department.

Those documents show that in 2012 and 2013,
county attorneys filed no property tax lawsuits in more than 70 of the
state's 120 counties. In many others, there were only a handful of
lawsuits, including in counties with relatively high delinquency rates.

For
instance, after a 2010 delinquency rate of 8.15 percent, Magoffin
County Attorney Greg Allen's office reported filing eight property tax
lawsuits in 2012, the earliest a foreclosure lawsuit would be allowed.
The office did not report filing any collection foreclosures in 2013,
after a 2011 delinquency rate of 9.32 percent.

Leslie County
Attorney Leroy Lewis' office reported filing four tax foreclosures in
2012, after a 2010 delinquency rate of 6.33 percent. State reports did
not indicate that the office filed any collection foreclosures in 2013,
after a 2011 delinquency rate of 7 percent.

Rockcastle County
Attorney Billy Reynolds said he thinks some county attorneys are
reluctant to sue because it could alienate voters.

"A lot of county attorneys look at it as a vote," Reynolds said.

Jerry
Coleman, an Elizabethtown attorney who does legal work for a company
that buys delinquent tax bills, said third-party buyers try to
cherry-pick the bills that would be easiest to collect, but the buyers
don't get all the bills worth suing over.

And if county attorneys showed greater willingness to sue, it would motivate people to pay their taxes, Coleman said.

"I
still think there's a beneficial effect for the county attorneys to
bring some of these" collection suits, he said. "I think the county
attorneys need to be more aggressive."

But several county
attorneys said the bills left behind after third-party investors comb
through the delinquent-tax roll would cost more to go after than they're
worth in most cases.

KSN&C

Why This Blog?

So far as we know, we only get one lifetime. So, when I "retired" in 2004, after 31-years in public education, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to teach, write and become a student again.

I have listened to so many commentaries over the years about what should be done to improve Kentucky's schools - written largely by folks who have never tried to manage a classroom, run a school, or close an achievement gap. I came to believe that I might have something to offer.

I moved, in 1985, from suburban northern Kentucky to what was then the state’s flagship district - Fayette County. I have had a unique set of experiences to accompany my journey through KERA’s implementation. I have seen children grow to graduate and lead successful lives. I have seen them go to jail and I have seen them die. I have been amazed by brilliant teachers, dismayed by impassive bureaucrats, disappointed by politicians and uplifted by some of Kentucky’s finest school children. When I am not complaining about it, I will attest that public school administration is critically important work.

Democracy is run by those who show up. In our system of government every citizen has a voice, but only if they choose to use it.

This blog is totally independent; not supported or sponsored by any institution or political organization. I will make every effort to fully cite (or link to) my sources. Please address any concerns to the author.

On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

An action shot: The Principal...as a much younger man.

Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

Professin'

Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

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